Energy Bill [HL]

Committee (4th Day)

My Lords, I should inform the Committee that if Amendment 129 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 130 because of pre-emption.

Clause 110: Fusion energy facilities: nuclear site licence not required

Amendment 129

129: Clause 110, page 99, line 13, leave out subsection (2) Member’s explanatory statement This appears to be covered already in previous legislation.

My Lords, I will also speak to Amendment 130, as the noble Lord ably explained.

I understand that the noble Baroness the Minister will respond to this group. By way of background, these amendments relate to Clause 110 in Part 3, Chapter 3, headed “Fusion energy facilities: nuclear site licence not required”. This refers back to the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 and the clause confirms the exclusion of fusion energy facilities from nuclear site licensing requirements. It also defines the term “fusion energy facility”.

I think we are all a lot more au fait with the issues around fusion after the exciting—for some of us—news from California that has come through over the last couple of days. We know that fusion power is a proposed form of power generation that will generate electricity by using heat from nuclear fusion reactions. Devices designed to harness the energy released from this process are known as fusion reactors. Research into fusion reactors began way back in the 1940s but, as of 2022, only one design, which we have all just been hearing about, an inertial confinement laser-driven fusion machine at the US National Ignition Facility, has conclusively produced a positive fusion energy gain factor—that is, more power output than input. As I said, this was highlighted this week as a major breakthrough in the race to find electricity free from a carbon background.

Physicists have pursued the technology for decades and, as I say, it promises to be a potential source of near limitless clean energy. However, a word of caution: as we know, experts are telling us that there is still some way to go before this technology is able to power our homes. Also, in October 2022, West Burton power station site in Nottinghamshire was selected as the home for the UK’s prototype fusion energy plant.

Section 1 of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965 states:

My Lords, I think I support the broad thrust of this amendment, and certainly the whole. If we are to move at all further on fusion technology, we will need a complete review of all the regulations covering it. We were discussing hydrogen in the same way the other day. This good news from California on fusion technology, to which the Minister referred earlier in the Chamber, should not mean that the pressure is off all other forms of low-carbon heating. It is absolutely clear that we need to have this in perspective. As I see it, the Californian experiment creates 1.5 times the input of energy that went into producing this reaction. I am in favour of fusion technology, but half a century ago I worked at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell. Culham was just down the road and I recall that our colleagues there assured us that we would have fusion technology, either here or in the Soviet Union, within the next 25 years. That would have taken us roughly to the late 1980s. We have not got there yet. I hope we will now, but we should not let the good news from California take our eyes off everything else we are doing to decarbonise our energy system.

My Lords, I welcome fusion being mentioned in the Bill and I am sure the Labour amendment is reasonable. We had the big celebration at the Livermore lab in California, but I thought I read earlier this year that the tokamak at Culham had achieved a similar thing for a split second. Clearly, I was wrong. I just want to welcome the recognition that we should still pursue this technology, despite, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, rightly says, it having taken a long time. The research must continue—we are part of ITER in France, which will be coming on—and I welcome this being in the Bill. The amendment seems quite reasonable. One thing that fusion does is spread an awful lot of neutrons around, which partly eat up the reactor itself, which could be of some danger.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, for their two amendments, and the noble Lords, Lord Whitty and Lord Teverson, for their contributions. It is really interesting that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, worked at Harwell. It has been a rolling 25 years for quite a long time, but I think we are now down to nearer 15 years, according to Ian Chapman of the UKAEA. The noble Lord is right to put in a note of caution. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, is right: we did something similar in Culham, but I think that had similar input to output rather than greater output than input. Certainly, in terms of commercialisation, the UK is ahead of the pack and the rest of the world in developing commercial fusion and spherical tokamak projects.

I can reassure noble Lords that the Government consulted widely last year on the measure explicitly to exclude fusion energy facilities from nuclear site licensing requirements. Following the consultation, they decided that fusion energy facilities should not require nuclear site licences, as this is disproportionate to the hazards associated with them. Unlike fission, fusion does not produce very long-lived, high-level radioactive waste, and there is no risk of a runaway chain reaction. Existing processes of consenting and permitting are proportionate to the hazard of a fusion energy facility. That position was supported by a clear majority of consultation respondents, including the Office for Nuclear Regulation and the current regulators of fusion, the Environment Agency and the Health and Safety Executive. As that was all set out in a full consultation last year, we see no need to consult again on the same issue at this time. Without the amendment, there is a possibility that future fusion energy facilities could inadvertently fall under nuclear site licensing requirements. Those would be disproportionate to the hazards associated with fusion energy facilities, which are significantly lower than hazards associated with traditional nuclear facilities.

I thank the Minister for her comments; we look forward to further information. With that, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 129 withdrawn.

Amendment 130 not moved.

Clause 110 agreed.

Clause 111: Climate Change Act 2008: meaning of “UK removals”

Amendment 130A not moved.

Clause 111 agreed.

Amendment 130B not moved.

Clause 112: The Independent System Operator and Planner (“the ISOP”)

Amendment 130C